The Department of Justice is fighting to strip the billionaire Sackler family of the sweeping legal immunity granted as part of a controversial $4.5 billion opioid settlement. …in filings, DOJ trustee Harrington argued that the releases are unconstitutional because they deprive people of the ability to make legal claims – a form of property – against the…
Oregon Attorney General Ellen Rosenblum said she was weighing an appeal… the questioning of Sackler in the 337-page deposition centered on Purdue’s marketing of OxyContin. Following the release of the revealing deposition’s contents – which Purdue fought for three years to keep secret… the settlement denies the thousands of plaintiffs – whose lawsuits total a staggering $40 trillion – their…
More than two-thirds of Congress cashed a pharma campaign check in 2020… the ruling, which is exactly what the Sacklers demanded, grants releases from liability for harm caused by the company’s aggressive and sometimes illegal marketing of the discontinued opioid OxyContin and other opioids. In addition to the Sacklers themselves, hundreds of individuals and organizations…
Canada is still in the grips of an opioid crisis — a crisis that is now much worse than it was just a year ago. In B.C., there were more than 100 “illicit drug toxicity” deaths per month for six consecutive months from March to August 2020, and more than 175 such deaths each month…
According to Forbes, the Sackler family made $12 billion to $13 billion in profit from OxyContin manufacturer Purdue Pharma—much more than what was previously known, according to the Wall Street Journal, citing court records. On Wednesday [10/21/2020], Sackler family members associated with Purdue agreed to pay a $225 million penalty to resolve a Justice Department civil probe…
Twenty-five state attorneys general wrote to US Attorney General William Barr last week [mid-October] arguing against the plan to create a government-controlled company out of the assets of Purdue Pharma, arguing that the government should not be in the business of selling OxyContin. The company doesn’t have $8 billion in cash available to pay the…
In… public comments on behalf of the Sacklers, White told me why the family believed the litigation against them and their company is legally dubious, factually misleading and politically motivated. The claims are gargantuan: An expert plaintiffs’ witness in the nationwide MDL in Cleveland recently estimated that it will cost nearly half a trillion dollars…
The legal pressure on the prominent family behind the company that makes OxyContin, the prescription painkiller that helped fuel the nation’s opioid epidemic, is likely to get more intense … Having Sackler family members named as defendants in Massachusetts “indicates that the government attorneys believe they have the ‘smoking guns’ necessary to broaden the potential liability…
New York’s attorney general… told a U.S.bankruptcy [on April 29th, 2020] court that the Sackler family, owners of Purdue Pharma LP, have slow-rolled and resisted discovery requests into their finanancial information. AG Letitia James said that the Sackler’s have produced few primary documents in the six months to make voluntary disclosures about their finances. The…
What some call philanthropy, others, such as Stanford University ethics professor Rob Reich, call “reputation laundering”. But what’s less well known, though increasingly being exposed, is that much of their wealth comes from one product – OxyContin, the blockbuster prescription painkiller first launched in 1996. “Greed is the main thing. The market for OxyContin should have been much,…
